


Comfort and Joy

by ForAllLove



Series: House for the Holidays [1]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sick!Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForAllLove/pseuds/ForAllLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson ponders Christmases past, present, and future. House makes tea.</p><p>Written for the <a href="http://sickwilson-fest.livejournal.com">Sick!Wilson Fest</a> prompt, “On Christmas, Wilson is at home with the flu, but he appreciates how much less miserable you feel when someone lives with you who tends to you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort and Joy

James had celebrated many Christmases in his life.

Well, not at first. He remembered how, when he was a child, Christmas just seemed like a time stores changed their décor and hired men to wear fake beards and pillow-padded red suits. It wasn’t something his family participated in. He didn’t get picked on for not celebrating it, not any more than he usually did; in fact, he only felt different from his schoolmates for a while, right between too young and old enough to understand, but he got gifts during Hanukkah and it was longer than Christmas, and, to a kid, that’s all the logic there is.

When he got older, things were different. As his awareness of the outside world grew, he began to wonder what made the holiday special. Why did people behave differently for the Christmas season, then go right back to how they were when those trees they’d so recently purchased ended up on the curb? There was an alluring charge in the air that made the time seem alive. He wanted to feel that feeling, too.

He celebrated his first Christmas in college. As an experienced and worldly adult, it was hard to not know what it was about, so he ended up asking a classmate he’d never really talked to before to explain the significance of the various traditions. He’d gotten the secular, commercialized version, the same as he’d always gathered, but it helped to hear it explained, anyway. He’d been infected with the charm of the season that year.

Since then, he’d had many more firsts at Christmastime.

There were little things: his first Christmas present, his first tree, his first tree that didn’t come from a lot, his first drive around to see the lights in the neighborhood.

There was his first Christmas with House. He’d been excited over giving House a gift, which didn’t quite work but never dissuaded him from trying again each year.

As with all his memories after they’d met, most of his important holiday memories involved or revolved around House. He remembered the first Christmas they’d hung out in the dark, the first time he’d heard House play Christmas songs on the piano, the first time they goofed off in the snow.

There were other, less positive Christmases, too. The first time House had been too busy with Stacy. The first time James had come home from a nice evening with House to an angry woman. The first Christmas after the infarction.

Through the years, he’d come to define the joy of the Christmas season as the time spent with people he loved.

Through the years, that had narrowed down to House. The wives and girlfriends James had entertained eventually passed, and House stayed. He was more family than they’d ever been.

Last year was the first Christmas House had actually been his family.

This year was the first Christmas James was sick.

***

It had started days ago, when a runny-nosed clinic kid gave House her flu. He was lucky enough to get the kind that involved vomiting. On top of that, he’d been feverish, coughing, and thoroughly miserable.

James took care of him to the best of his ability ― cool baths, warm blankets, various concoctions to soothe House’s cough-ravaged throat, even a night huddled together on the bathroom floor after an incident with canes and bed sheets.

The only thing House had resisted was a trip to the hospital to test for swine flu. Swine flu is just flu, he had snapped in between coughs, people don’t die from it any more than they do from normal flu.

James worried then over the number of people that die from normal flu.

It had been a long, rough stretch, but now House was on the mend, just as James had hit rock bottom.

He was currently nesting in a heap of blankets on the couch, his gaze wandering over the sparkling, colored lights on their Christmas tree, while House clattered around in the kitchen. The trip through holiday traffic to the hospital earlier had worn him out. He had normal flu.

There were presents for him under the tree, just like last time. House had discovered a whole new realm of things to buy for Christmas and Hanukkah and birthdays and other such days, things he planned on re-giving again and again later. He claimed the other gifts, the ones James could actually show people, were just for camouflage. James loved finding out which packages were which, and enjoying them all. It was nice, he thought, to be able to lie warm on Christmas Eve and stare at pretty things like lights and gift wrapping, while crisp, white snow covered a world of suffering and transformed it into a winter wonderland.

He dropped off a bit before House nudged him upright, squeezed between him and the arm of the couch, and laid James’s head back down on his good thigh. He set a covered mug of tea on the table. James had no interest in it, not after the tantalizing aroma of the chicken soup House had cooked from scratch, prior to their venture outside, had turned his stomach. No, he was content to nestle against House’s leg and let himself be petted.

Too soon, House sat him up again and forced some of that tea into him. Fluids were supposed to be good, but James couldn’t help but think that they just gave him something more to throw up. The tea tasted nice, though. It left a trail of warmth all the way down. He didn’t feel sick.

House rumbled something about bed, but James made the sort of sound that meant he was happy where he was. House moved him around until they were lying down with James on top. He couldn’t see the tree this way, but he could see the lights change on House. The colors shimmered in the silver in his beard and were lost in the shadows of the darker hairs. James nuzzled his jaw and neck, snuggled better into his arms, accepted little kisses to forehead and cheek as House stretched down for a blanket and tucked it around him, holding him from top to toe. He folded both his arms up, one hand under his shoulder and the other settled on House’s chest, wrapped in warm, strong fingers. He felt sleepy and content; he closed his eyes and listened to House’s humming and the sound of two beating hearts.

This was the second Christmas of the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Does anyone even remember swine flu? =)


End file.
